My opinion:
People keep claiming Maplestory is way too Pay2WinI dunno if they have been playing Maple correctly or not, but Maplestory isn't too Pay2Win anymore
Recently, Maplestory is giving out more and more ways to relieve this "Pay2Win"More free Unique Potential scrolls from Events
Rewards PointsMaster cubes in like literally every Event Shop
Ardentmill cube craftingBoss cube drops
Elite Bossetc.

We shouldn't keep complaining about Pay2Win
Sure, I admit there are some features of the game that are kind of Pay2Win, such as Bonus Potentialsand the godly rings and pendants in Gachapon

But realize this fact
Maplestory has chosen this road a long long time ago. Because of this, Maplestory can not just suddenly changePlayers complain that all the godly stuff are Pay2Win to get them
So what do you want?Do you want us to be able to buy those Hilla and Magnus rings from NCPs or have them drop from their respective bosses?

I'm telling you right now, that although it'll make players stronger, it will also ruin a lot of player's economical status and overall change the FM

Players who had these rings before would find themselves in an unfair treatment because they paid big mesos or money for the rings.
A lot of FM ring prices would also change too.Ha, who needs this so and so ring, when i can get a Hilla's Rage ring.

Now imagine this on a massive scale with a lot of the godly items in Maplestory, it would completely change FM prices in all the worlds and leave many players losing the value on their items.

Sure maple player will be able to get stronger now, but really?
Do you want everyone to be strong that like no one stands out now?What will become labled as "Godly Gears" now?

A solution for this I think would be for Maple to slowly but steadily release events and stuff for us to slowly be able to make mesos or cube stuff.
Which I see Maplestory is kind of doing.

Although I do admit that there's not much easing out in the Pay2Win aspects on Bonus Potentials and Gachapon/Marvel Machine/Event exclusives where the only way to obtain them are through real money.

+2
Who cares if its pay2win, if you dont like it then dont play. The only reason the game still exists is because there are people paying for it. Theres a trade off in this game, and that either you spend your money or your time. I much prefer to spend my money tyvm, i only have one life and id rather not spend ages getting something when i can just pay for it.

+1
To keep this brief as I can: The problem is that P2W as a concept is heavily contested in terms of its meaning, although generally speaking it refers to paying for items or content that will give a special advantage over others.

There was a period of time back in 2006-07 when the only NX items you could buy from the Cash Shop were cosmetic and store permits. Pets costed the same as they do now, except you had to buy an Item Magnet and an Item Pouch separately for your pet in order to auto-loot things which costs more NX. Given that there weren't as many items back then as there are now, the benefits of owning a pet over not having one weren't that strong.
Then later on they started to bring in 2x EXP coupons, Miracle Circulators, Cubes, etc. According to those who have witnessed this progression of MapleStory over time, the game has slowly become more and more P2W. The benefits of having more NX to spend, and even more $$$ in order to skip what would otherwise be a tedious process, started to accumulate more and more.

How you feel about this depends on whether or not this is an issue to you. To the OP (Keyan) of the link posted above; they may be okay with this and may not see it as an issue (and therefore will not define it as P2W as such). To others, however, they may not be willing to spend that much time, even if it's just a few months or a year to acquire that same level of progress. Especially when you can use other services outside of the boundaries of Nexon's ToS that enable for one to purchase such progress with $$$, whether it be mesos, items or accounts. However, how that falls into P2W as I've stated is still hotly contested.

If you define p2w as @readers said, "paying for items or content that will give a special advantage over others", all those special items can be acquired over time without paying (even if against the ToS).

Does p2w exist in the game? No, not really. As long as you put in the effort to work for it, you're not forced to pay to win.
BUT, the fact that a free to play player relies on paying players, that can be considered as p2w. It's all about your perspective.

i can solo pretty cool bosses and i can count the nx cards ive bought, theyre only 2
sure i got hundreds of maplepoints from forum contests that helped me bpot my weapons, but its still a fact i havent taken a single bill from my wallet to fund in this game, that money i have used went to looks

+1
the post wouldn't have really caused anything if the OP didn't act so c0cky towards others, or coulda just made a video showcasing his equips and more people will be like wow nice job instead of him trying to argue pay2win or not. But the OP originally had the motive in wanting to argue, so cant blame that.